SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: Meat Alternatives - May 2021 - 18

E X E CU TIV E PE RSP ECTIVE

Myrick: It's definitely more of a long-term goal.
We certainly believe that it is achievable, but it
will require advances on the R&D side. Improving
the yields of our production process, finding less
costly inputs that still give us good yields and it
will require significant scale, which is many years
off. It will take time, but it's definitely one of our
goals on a longer-term. We think that we are in
range of premium meat products, the $10 to $25
per pound range depending on how we assume
our current performance translates to commercial scale.

(From left) Derek Sarno,
well-known vegan
chef, helps prepare
some Memphis Meats
cultured meat dishes for
co-founders, Uma Valenti
and Nicholas Genovese.

M+P: In the past couple of years, plant-based
meat companies have done a good job of marketing products toward meat-eaters, or people who
aren't necessarily vegetarians or vegans. Will cellcultured meat companies use the same strategy to
reach consumers?
Myrick: We certainly want to make clear for consumers that our products are real meat. They are
not made out of plant ingredients and looking to
approximate that conventional product. This is
the product they're used to although made in a
very different and extraordinary way - down to
the level of the cell, to the DNA. Our chicken is
chicken, our beef is beef. By the same token, for
people who don't eat meat or poultry or who might
have an allergy to those products, they need to
know that it is meat, it is beef, it is chicken. And
some people may choose not to eat it as a result.
We definitely intend to serve meat lovers and
omnivores, as well as folks who may not be eating conventional meat for any number of reasons
that are important to them.

2021 MEAT ALTERNATIVE TRENDS + TECHNOLOGY MEAT+ POULTRY

M+P: People became familiar with mainstream
plant-based meat alternatives, like Impossible
Foods or Beyond Meat, through fast-food restaurants. Is that how Memphis Meats would like to
release products? Is that strategy smart when the
product is slightly more nuanced in terms of what
it is and how it's made?
Myrick: We do like restaurants as an initial channel for our products. We do actively want to collect
feedback from consumers from cooks and from
chefs around the product and what they think and
how it's performing, and it's easier to do that in a
foodservice setting or retail setting. We also do
want to make sure that consumers have a good
experience the first time they try our products. We
think by partnering with restaurants, we can help
make sure that is true. And lastly, we'll be supply
constrained in the early days. It will take us time
to build out the production capacity so that we
could go into a major regional or national retailer.
Restaurants are a good way to get product out and
start to kind of demystify and tell its story while
we still have relatively small production capacity.
M+P: People are very fond of steaks or pork chops
- how is Memphis Meats moving from a ground
meat product into whole-muscle cuts? Are you
developing your own scaffolding technology?
Myrick: We are already producing whole cuts,
whole tissue products. Rather than producing
cells in a suspension or in a slurry, we are producing whole tissues directly out of the cultivator.
We have made chicken strips and chicken breasts
that have texture well beyond ground meat. We
think that's an area where we're really leading the
industry so far since we are doing it through a proprietary cultivator that we built in-house. When
we harvest meat out of our cultivator, you handle
it with a fork and knife, not with a spoon, which
we think is pretty unique in our industry. At this
stage, some of the simpler textured products like
chicken breast, we're getting really good at. The
complex ribeye steak is definitely going to take
some time, we're not there yet, but it's something
that we do hope to do eventually.
I'm an omnivore. I've eaten meat my whole
life, I still eat it. I don't intend to give it up. I think
I'm one of our more calibrated taste testers and
the chicken breast is pretty spot on.
What the large majority of US consumers
would say is that " plant-based products are interesting, happy to give them a try, happy to make
them part of my diet. But there's something special about meat and I'm not trying to give that up. "

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT: Meat Alternatives - May 2021

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